Scone -- rhymes with "John" or with "Joan"?

[pne]

If you are from the UK, how do you pronounce "scone"?

Comments

[robnorth.livejournal.com]

I'm Canadian and I rhyme it with "John". But in my experience, Canadians are about 50-50 on "John"/"Joan".

As for "vase", most Americans I've met say "vayce", and most Brits say "vahze". Canada, as always, goes down the middle; some say "vayce", some say "vahze", and a surprisingly large number split the difference and say "vayze". I usually say "vahze", but it's common enough in Canada that no-one blinks.

[tungol.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'm a "John"-rhyming Canadian. And vase rhymes with flaws.

[tungol.livejournal.com]

Grr, not thinking straight. Scone rhymes with "Joan", not "John" for me.

[pne.livejournal.com]

vase rhymes with flaws

First time I've heard that pronunciation!

(Unless you also rhyme "father" and "bother", I suppose, so your "long-ah" and "long-aw" phonemes are not separate as they are in my idiolect)

[tungol.livejournal.com]

Yes, I rhyme father and bother. They're both /A/ (or possibly /Q/, I've never gotten a clear handle on the difference between those two sounds). I never know which words have which vowel that other people distinguish.

[robnorth.livejournal.com]

Yup, us Canadians are pretty lazy with our vowels. "Father" rhymes with "bother", "ant" rhymes with "aunt", "lot" rhymes with "caught", etc. etc.

And we don't say "oot" and "aboot"! We just don't emphasise each vowel in the "ou" diphthong as much as Americans do; we sort of gloss it together into one compromise vowel sound that isn't "short oo". For me, I think it's a kind of "eh-oo" diphthong, rather than the "ahh-oo" that (I think) most Americans use.